The original version is written in Dutch, by the same author, as: “De Mastmakersdochters”. The Mastmakers’ Daughters are cousins. They have the same name: Rennie de Vries. Our main character grows up above her father’s mastmaker shop in a small seaport on the former Zuiderzee. Her three year younger cousin, born in 1904, grows up in Germany where her father started a mastmaker branch of the two century old family business. The German mastmaker family moved back to Holland in 1925. Rennie joins Hitler’s Naz
The alphabetical index contains nearly 350 names making it a very useful tool for historians of this period and geography. If you are related to a Frisian, a political prisoner, a German war criminal, Dutch resistance member or traitor you’ll most likely find your family name in the book.
The book’s first part is based on Rennie’s memoirs. It is a very personal account of her growing up in a small seaport, when the fishing and commercial fleet moved by sail and muscle, before running water and electricity; before the Zuiderzee was turned from a saltwater sea into a freshwater lake and the consequences this brought to the mastmaker and his customers. Her father was the fourth generation mastmaker of the family business that celebrated it’s bi-centennial in 2002. Rennie embraced the emancipati